Waves traveling across the surface of the sea tend to move relatively slowly. Likewise, their oscillations tend to have relatively long periods, e.g., on the order of eight to twenty seconds. However, despite their relatively slow movement, waves tend to possess and/or manifest substantial amounts of energy. For these reasons, it is both desirable and difficult to extract energy from ocean waves. The device of the current invention efficiently extracts energy from ocean waves with a robust and relatively inexpensive design having few or no moving parts.
A variety of embodiments of the current invention contribute to solving at least two significant limitations and/or drawbacks of large-scale computing.
1) Computers require electrical power in order to operate and perform their calculations. Electrical power is required to energize CPUs. Electrical power is required to energize random-access memory. Electrical power is required to energize shared and/or persistent memory (e.g. hard disks). Electrical power is required to energize switches, routers, and other equipment supporting network connections between computers.
2) Computers generate heat. Most (if not all) of the electrical power used to energize computers is converted to, and/or lost as, heat from the circuits and components that execute the respective computational tasks and/or electronic functions. The heat generated by computers can raise the temperatures of those and/or adjacent computers to levels that can cause those computers to fail, especially when those computers are located in close proximity to one another. Because of this, computers, and/or the environments in which they operate, must be cooled. And, cooling, e.g. through air conditioners and/or air conditioning, requires and/or consumes significant amounts of electrical energy. Favorable historical trends in the miniaturization of computer components (e.g. “Moore's Law”) are currently slowing, suggesting that future increases in computational power may require greater investments in cooling than was common in the past.
A variety of embodiments of the current invention also solve at least two significant limitations and/or drawbacks of aquaculture.
1) The raising of fish in reservoirs located on shore, or near shore, can become polluted with the excrement of the fish thereby slowing the growth of those fish, e.g., by encouraging bacteria in the water to consume and thereby reduce the available dissolved oxygen, and by increasing the risk of disease within individual fish and/or within entire populations of fish.
2) The raising of seaweeds and algae within reservoirs located on shore, or in the ocean, is constrained by the amount of sunlight available to shine upon the upper surface of the reservoir water, as well as by the concentration of mineral nutrients available within the water.